A road-traffic broadcasting receiver which is able to selectively reproduce traffic messages is described in German Patent Application No. 42 08 277. To do this, a route from a start point to a destination point is first defined in the road-traffic receiver and the traffic messages corresponding to locations along the calculated route selected. The vehicle driver is usually interested only in those traffic messages corresponding to events along his route. In some situations, however, this is insufficient if the driver would like to make a detour or take an alternative route, for example, when he encounters a large traffic jam. With a conventional road-traffic broadcasting receiver, it is not possible to also select those traffic messages which correspond to detours or to the immediate surroundings of the original route. In addition, the use of the conventional road-traffic broadcasting receiver requires that the exact route is defined and the start and destination points are known.